China’s audacious land reclamation activities in the South China Sea are only the latest sign that its approach to settling maritime disputes with its neighbors has taken a sharp and dangerous turn. Although China began acting more assertively after perceiving its ascension to great power status in the wake of the global financial crisis, Beijing still felt compelled to justify its muscular movements in Asia as necessary reactions to the provocations of “troublemakers” in the region. Sure, China was standing strong, but arguably in response to the adventurism of others. It was more retaliatory than overtly belligerent.
As Beijing made a habit of tempering and justifying its behavior, leading Western analysts developed terms like “reactive assertiveness” and described Chinese revisionism as “cautious and considered.” The seizure of Scarborough Reef in the South China Sea in April 2012 was explained as a compulsory response to the Philippines’ use of a naval vessel (rather than a coast guard ship) to interdict illegal Chinese fishermen.
Similarly, China’s persistent incursions into Japanese-administered waters around the Senkaku Islands have been, according to Beijing, an obligatory answer to Tokyo’s purchase and “nationalization” of the islands in September 2012.
Over the last eight months, however, China’s efforts to alter Asia’s geography have become unequivocally self-initiated. On the eve of Vice President Biden’s trip to Beijing last November, China announced the establishment of a new air defense identification zone in the East China Sea that extended over areas controlled by Japan and South Korea. This triggered widespread speculation about what had compelled Beijing to make this provocative move. Was it comments by the Japanese defense minister threatening to shoot down Chinese drones that wandered into Japanese airspace? It had to be something, right?
The following month saw the promulgation of new fishing regulations with which China blessed itself with additional legal authorities in the South China Sea, further advancing its claims over hotly contested territories. Nowhere to be found, however, was the kind of defensive pretext that would have accompanied a similar step in years prior.
Fast-forward to May 2014 and China sent a $1 billion oil rig into disputed waters off the coast of Vietnam. Desperate for an explanation, American commentators speculated that perhaps this was a retort to President Obama’s April trip to the region. But again, the Chinese offered no excuses, arguing instead that they were conducting normal economic activities in Chinese waters.
And now comes land reclamation and the enlargement of small outcrops into islands that will likely be used for military activities. Not content to simply change facts on the ground, China is now changing the ground.
In public, Chinese officials continue to deny this shift toward proactive assertiveness. Lieutenant General Wang Guanzhong told a capacity crowd at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 1 that, “China has never taken the first step to provoke troubles.” This rhetoric is likely to endure, but unfortunately for China’s propaganda machine, the track record of the last several months speaks for itself.
So what’s changed? At least three elements explain this more assertive turn. First, the newly appointed President Xi Jinping is willing—and he has said as much—to be more forceful in achieving China’s territorial aims and to accept higher degrees of regional instability in the process. Second, China’s governing institutions have become more coherent through the consolidation of maritime agencies and stronger coordination among its national security policymaking bodies. And finally, Chinese capability is growing in terms of both military and maritime capacity, as well as economic instruments like the deep water oil rig now floating off the coast of Vietnam.
It’s actually not that complicated. China is changing the status quo in Asia because it wants to and thinks it can. Xi Jinping is a confident and powerful leader with a high-priority to-do list, and he’s increasingly enabled with greater capabilities and the institutions to deploy them. Mix in an economic slowdown and a healthy dose of nationalism and you have a recipe for revisionism.
The result, however, is that American aspirations for China’s rise have gone terribly off-script. For decades, U.S. policy toward China has comprised a dual-track “hedging” strategy that includes engaging Beijing in an effort to induce China to support the existing international order, accompanied by a balancing component in which the United States and its allies deter Beijing from choosing an aggressive path. But now this strategy is coming apart at both ends: China neither accepts the territorial realities of Asia, nor is it deterred from coercive acts of revisionism.
The real problem is that China’s bullying will endure as long as no one gets in the way. Why wouldn’t it? Beijing is pushing on an open door, incurring few tangible costs for its assertiveness and appearing to believe (perhaps rightly so) that it can ride out whatever regional criticism arises in response. Based on its track record of the last several years, it’s understandable that Beijing remains confident that most countries in the region will, at the end of the day, be unwilling to imperil their economic relationship with China.
Alarm bells ought be ringing more loudly in Washington. Ultimately, it will be up to the United States to staunch China’s mounting revisionism. But this will first require a sober recognition that the old theories of how to shape China’s rise aren’t working. This is a difficult conversation to have in Washington because acknowledging Chinese behavior for what it is—undeterred and unapologetic assertiveness—will necessitate a more serious American response than we have seen to date.
This doesn’t mean forgoing the cooperative elements of the “hedge” and committing to a highly competitive relationship with China. We’re not there yet. And besides, there’s a big difference between determining that China is presently undeterred versus determining that it is patently undeterrable. Before definitively drawing the latter conclusion, the immediate task for U.S. policymakers is to test the elasticity of Chinese decision-making.
This calls for greater attention to cost-imposition strategies that attempt to shape the relative value of continued revisionism for China. Washington will have to explore the full potential range of economic, military, diplomatic and political points of leverage over Beijing (and there are many) to increase the costs of Chinese assertiveness, including areas that directly impinge on the interests of China’s leaders. The United States will also have to develop more tailored options for responding directly to maritime coercion in ways that repel specific acts of revisionism, rather than simply exacting lateral forms of punishment after the fact.
China’s slow but steady revisions to the territorial status quo in Asia are not a legacy the Obama administration wants to leave behind. Being more proactive in stemming this behavior represents the principal challenge for Washington’s China policy today.
Ely Ratner is senior fellow and deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
Photo credit: Asitimes
luddy 
Jian 
John 
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biasbuster 
JanMan 
JohnRobinson 
Why do we find ourselves in the situation where “alarm bells ought be ringing more loudly in Washington?” The vast majority of university professors – the experts – have been telling us for years that more trade with China will make for a friendly rise. Yet, now we find that they have been wrong all along.
US universities have been producing incompetent economists for a long time. And now we find incompetent international relations experts too. It is almost certain there are many more problematic areas as well. They produce endless incompetence with little apparent penalty for being wrong. It appears that the entire foundation of western civilization sits on an earthquake fault. When the big one hits then the West will be finished.
China is a big problem we should be worried about. But it is the West itself that is even a bigger problem.
But why are you laying these policy decisions at the feet of “Professors”? US policy towards China began a turn beginning with Henry Kissinger and Nixon (Kissinger, although an erstwhile professor, was Sec of State at that time) and continued with the Bush and Clinton presidencies along an unbroken line, assuming “peaceful rise” and “opening up” to be axioms written in stone. These have been unquestioned assumptions for decades. Terribly bad policy, to be sure, but hardly the fault of an abstract “academic” community. It was partly realpolitik, partly sheer greed in light of the size of China’s potential consumer market.
Hi Ely,
I believe neither your and Chinese government characterization in both East and South China Sea. The facts are both areas are disputed and ought to be settled by negotiation between the parties involved. The West blame China while China blame US Asia Pivot to instigate all the troubles. The facts are both deserved to blame. The West wished that China will not respond or at least not respond strongly as in the past while China had hoped that its neighbors will not stir up any trouble as in the past.
The best and only solution is for China and its neighbors to sit down and come up a mutually-accepted solution. But with US involvement, it will not be possible.
If you look at things only through the US vs. China perspective, then you may have some valid points. However, why does everything has to do with the US? If you were fair enough, you should look at what has led to today’s situation; you should look at what small countries have done in the South and East China Sea whether in terms of stationing soldiers or whether in terms of oil drilling; you should look at how they have teated China and the Chinese people, especially the Chinese fishermen (they are still holding some of them). I don’t want to treat China as an enemy before you look at the evidence that China is one. I recommend you an article from a businessman’s perspective in this regard on the Forbes’ website (http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenharner/2014/06/22/the-nytimes-china-threat-myth-the-pivot-to-asia-and-obamas-foreign-policy-legacy/)
“Why does everything has to do with the US?” Because the US deliberately inserts itself, that’s why. What else is the Asia Pivot?
The reporting of the issue is incredibly skewed, typically towards a stance that – entirely by coincidence, of course – benefits US national interests. These disputed waters are disputed (clue’s in the word) yet to read the column inches it’s as if there was some slam-dunk case for everyone except China. There’s not, the disputes have never been resolved.
Each of them is different with different justifications and arguments from the various claimants. To simply assert ‘NO’ because that’s what would be preferred on the far side of the Pacific simply reinforces the perception that “international norms and agreements” are nothing but a sham designed to promote US interests regardless.
Here’s China’s submission to the UN General Assembly regarding Vietnam’s claims on the Xisha Islands. It’s strange that neither Mr Ratner nor the Western Press has not published it:
“In 1959, the Chinese government established the Administration Office for the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha Islands. In January 1974, the Chinese military and people drove the invading army of the Saigon authority of South Vietnam from the Shanhu Island and Ganquan Island of the Xisha Islands and defended China’s territory and sovereignty. The Chinese government enacted the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone in 1992 and published the base points and baselines of the territorial waters of the Xisha Islands in 1996, both of which reaffirm China’s sovereignty over the Xisha Islands and the extent of territorial waters of the islands. In 2012, the Chinese government established the various departments of Sansha city on the Yongxing Island of Xisha Islands.
During a meeting with charge d’affaires ad interim Li Zhimin of the Chinese Embassy in Vietnam on 15 June 1956, Vice Foreign Minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Ung Van Khiem solemnly stated that, “according to Vietnamese data, the Xisha Islands and Nansha Islands are historically part of Chinese territory.”
Le Loc, Acting Director of the Asian Department of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, who was present, specifically cited Vietnamese data and pointed out that, “judging from history, these islands were already part of China at the time of the Song Dynasty.“ – China’s Foreign Ministry website, June 8, regarding the HYSY 981 drilling rig in the Xisha Islands.
what is so surprising about a developing power wanting to change the status quo in its neighbourhood? the status quo has been designed for Cold War, namely, to strangle/control Chinese supply routes and freedom of action in its own backwater, with the so called first and 2nd island chains, which are completely Cold War constructs created on American terms. Is it any wonder and is it really somehow morally wrong (as implied by Western consensus) for China wanting to change that status quo, by all means at its disposal?
Ely promulgates biased half-truths. Witness all the quotation marks whenever positive adjectives are applied to China or negative adjectives applied to her adversaries, but not other way round. No mention of all the seizures of reefs, military constructions, illegal oil pumpings by Vietnam, Philippines & Malaysia. Remember it was the US who illegally “transferred” Chinese territory (Diaoyu Is.) to Japan in 1972 instead of returning them to China after WW2 as mandated by Cairo & Potsdam Declarations. China announced her ADIZ decades after Japan, Korea and US unilaterally announced theirs over similarly disputed territory, all of which extend far into international waters. (These areas are NOT “controlled” by Japan by any means.) The overlapping claims in E. & S. China Seas have not changed for decades (except for Vietnam’s sudden revision of her claims to include the China-controlled Xisha Islands,) yet troubles have emerged unceasingly ever since the US “pivot”. One has to be really naive or stupid to believe that US truly embraces China’s peaceful rise. Rather, US tried every trick on the book to sow discord so China would react angrily (and any fair-minded country would towards the US’ actions) to prove US assertions that China is not peaceful, justifying a US arms buildup and alliance building with countries to contain China. That way, US dominance can continue. If China does not respond, there’d be no end to US aggression at China’s expense.
I think your version of the real situation is more convincing and credible.
A cut-and-paste straight from the CCP’s press releases…. everything is the fault of everyone else and Beijing is only reacting whenever it’s provoked. Oh, but wait, the article is about the disconnect between that rhetoric and the actual track of the CCP of late. The previously fake argument is now even more fake because of the PRC’s own, self-initiated actions. Instead, you want to talk about the US and blame it. Nope, sorry, no cigar for you.
Thanks for playing, better luck next time.